Where to start? Some background information

We have had a basic version of Blackboard running since the government agency of the day gave us money to purchase one - 6 or 7 years ago. We invited a number of companies in to demonstrate their products to a selection of stakeholders at the college and chose Blackboard (this will not be a rant against Technical or Learnwise). At the time, I think it was the best choice. It worked, it was easy to set up and as as long as you knew how to attach a file, most people could get started with it.

But people weren't convinced that students were entitled to have the information they needed online, staff and student IT skill levels were low and home access to a computer and the internet even lower. Early adaptors moved ahead but take up was never good. People complained about the time it took to design a course although those that did found that the second year + was easier and less time consuming because the majority of the work was done.

Actually, for a number of years, we didn't have remote access anyway so you couldn't access your information from home.

We wanted to have Blackboard Enterprise so we could use all the bells and whistles but it was just too expensive as a yearly license to contemplate. And it was the old chicken and egg situation - you couldn't convince people to use it until they had the skills and saw the sense of it - and had access at home.

Sometime in 2008/9, people began hearing about Moodle and asking why we didn't have it, without understanding that actually Blackboard did all the things that Moodle did. Blackboard however, didn't do themselves any favours by treating FE like a very poor relation. When we upgraded from V 6.3 to 8 and had a shed load of problems, we found it very hard to get help until we screamed at the UK rep, who shook a few people upside down.

And then..... We joined the BECTA Technology Exemplar Network in early 2010 and people were talking about e-ILPs and e-Portfolios. Most of the network had Moodle and some of them were using a home brewed e-ILP which drew out information from the college MIS system. We saw a JISC project based at Lewisham College which used a hosted Moodle service from ULCC to create an e-ILP. Did I forget to say that our IT Services area doesn't have enough person power and expertise to run Moodle??

We invited ULCC in to demonstrate what we could get with a hosted service. The invited audience came from senior and middle management, plus IT Services. A director went to visit a college who had been using ULCC's services and had done a lot of research and costings and were pleased after a year with the product and service. In July 2010, the finance order was ok'd and now we will run Blackboard until the end of the license in January 2011 and begin to move things over to Moodle.